Night
by Luinramwen
Summary: Six feet by two feet by six. It's a lot of dirt to move, but what the hell. The hardest part is mine by right...


**Night**

-Summary - Six feet by two feet by six. It's a lot of dirt to move, but what the hell. The hardest part is mine by right...

A/N - So I'm cruel and unusual and I have a penchant for angst and tragedy. So sue me. I come up with my best descriptions with my bittersweet/angsty/tragic stuff. At least, that's what I think. You're free to tell me different.

Let's just say I got bored of reading all the bittersweet/fluffy 'aww, he saved Fai!' fics and decided to go for something a tad darker. Aka, the other choice Kurogane could have taken. Again - so I'm cruel and unusual and have a penchant for angst and tragedy. Plus I'm procrastinating on updating the things I said I'd update. I'm thinking Concerning Cats And Wizards is gonna have to wait until after the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, when I can go home and get the un-mixed up file from my home computer. As for Curse You... well, it's over halfway through the second chapter. I just hate typing with someone else in the room, or writing anything, to be quite honest; I get very jumpy and distracted - and unfortunately I have a roommate. Well, not 'unfortunately' - she's a very nice girl, but for a person as used to utter privacy and her own uninvadable space as I am... Well, I'm almost done, let's just leave it at that!

... Only one more comment: I did not write the poetry thingy in here. That belongs to Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. The song in question is called the Kender Mourning Song, from the book Dragons of Spring Dawning, and it's always been a favourite. It fit the idea, so I shamelessly used it.

Disclaimer - don't own, don't own, don't own.

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The sun is blazing; after the fierce winds and harsh rains of the day before it seems even hotter, even crueller than before.

It burns like the gaze of an indifferent god staring down on me as I stand waist deep in the hole, shovelling, the sandy soil constantly falling back in and pissing me off even more than I already am. Sweat blinds me as it slides down my forehead into my eyes; I can barely see what I am doing, but I can feel the blade of the shovel digging hard into the packed dirt, and the rhythm of the work and the ache in my muscles is a blessing on this sweltering, godforsaken afternoon.

It's too hot to think, and the rhythm of the digging numbs my mind; that's good. I don't feel like thinking. The sun scorches my skin and I long for shade; I have a splinter in my thumb that digs in deeper with every load of dirt I heave out of this hole. It hurts like hell, but I ignore it. That pain's better than my other options.

Six feet by two by six. It's a lot of dirt to move, but what the hell. The kid did the first bit. He insisted. I let him. And when the soil got rockier, heavier, the hole too deep for him to lift the dirt from it, I took over. The hardest part is mine by right. After all... it was just the kid's clone who did it, not the kid himself. I was the one who let him die.

The princess and the manju are probably still by that guy's side, weeping, numb with disbelief and shock. Maybe the girl will have closed his remaining eye; cleaned up his face a little, washing away the tears of blood. She would do that. Something so pointless, so useless, but sweet and kind nonetheless. I don't know what the hell she must be thinking. To wake up after that fight to find herself lying on the same bed as a dead body. The dead body of a guy who could always make her smile and laugh.

But what do I care? I don't feel anything at the mage's death. Why should I? I hated the bastard. It wasn't my fault - how could anyone be expected to pay the price the witch asked of me? - so there's no reason for me to feel guilty, even. He asked for death. He wanted to die. I let him, in spite of the kid's pleading eyes, in spite of the manju's wails. Stupid... but I don't regret it. Why should I? It's not like I liked him. It's not like I cared whether he lived or died, was whole or crumbling to pieces. It's just something that happened.

I'm not digging furiously because the pain of my muscles is better than pain of the heart. And that's sweat in my eyes. Not tears. Why the hell would I cry for that idiot? I should be dancing, except that's not my thing, and even if it was, it's too hot to even think about it. But he's gone, and all I can think of is good things that he's out of my life. No more teasing. No more stupid, annoying, 'cute' nicknames. No more random meowing. No more stupid laugh. No more brilliant smiles, false as a rhinestone, and just as glittering. No more of him forcing me to eat sweet stuff, no more random glompage, no more evasive answers, no more stupid refusals to fight, no more obvious lies, no more, no more, no more. I can get peace and quiet at last, for at least the manju's easy enough to tape up to shut him up.

It's a good thing. He's not important. He never was important. He was too small, too pathetic to really matter. To the princess and the kid and the manju he was someone - I know that was not sweat that I saw in the kid's eyes by the time he called it quits, and the kid just knew him through the eyes of his clone, but something of the heart the kid got back from that guy must have permeated the rest of him, because he looked as pale and drawn as I had ever seen him, worse even than when his clone had believed the mage dead in Oto. And the manju's wailing speaks for itself. As for the princess...

I'm far enough away from that building that the voices are faint and trembling like the heatwaves in the air; but the voice is clear and sweet and pure like water, and it's singing.

_Always before, the spring returned... the bright world in its cycle spun..._

That's the princess' voice; it's easy enough to tell. The song ripples up and down a minor scale, like drops of freezing, crystalline rain in this baking heat. I shiver in spite of myself. The words are like sunshine, but the rain in her voice is dark and grey; it falls through the sunshine and for a moment I think I can actually see it silvering the sandy ground. Like tears from the heavens... I shake my head. The heat's making me hallucinate.

_In air and flowers, grass and fern... assured and cradled by the sun..._

And another voice joins in, like a child's, high and lamenting, in an endless little descant like the babbling of a stream, harmonizing so perfectly with the little princess' song that I have to shiver again.

_Always before, you could explain... the turning darkness of the earth..._

I keep digging, and try not to notice that my shovel has slowed to keep time with the rhythm of the song. I don't know why they're singing. I don't know why they chose this song. I've never heard it before; I don't know if I like it. I purposely dig faster, irrhythmically.

_And how that dark embraced the rain... and gave the ferns and flowers birth..._

Symbols for things I don't quite understand. The song, the deadly heat, why that damn mage's last words were something about being sorry. None of this makes sense; I know I'm just the big, not-too-bright ninja, but I'm not a complete idiot. So, why?

_Already I forget these things... and how a vein of gold survives... the mining of a thousand springs... the seasons of a thousand lives..._

I don't know. I don't want to have to think about it anyways. All I will allow myself to think of is that the afternoon is wearing away, the heat is dying, dying, and eventually a faint breeze will rise, and if it doesn't start to rain, we'll bury the mage in this grave tonight.

_Now winter is my memory... now autumn, now the summer light... so spring... from now on... will be..._

And with the body we'll have to bury his memory, in the back of the mind, so that we're not always looking around the corner, with the princess wondering what's taking Fai-san so long to catch up, with the manju trying to turn to him to join him in a joke or a tease only to have his words die in his throat when he finds that guy's not there, with the kid always trying to turn to ask him for advice and ideas.

It's been a long time since someone I knew died, but I remember the actions afterwards, I remember feeling lost... so lost. That's gonna be the kids for sure. Not me. I'm fine without him. It's not like it's any different before. I was always the only real adult in this group. I don't need him to take my direction from. I don't take my bearings from anyone, and definitely not that idiot.

It's better that he's dead.

I don't even miss him.

And the hot sweat keeps rolling down my cheeks, salty and burning under the scorch of the pitiless sun.

_Another season into night..._.

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End file.
